The Descent of Man and Other Stories

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
392K words
Chapters
40

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social ObservationLove EntanglementsHuman NatureComplex HumanityPsychological InsightSuspenseful AtmosphereShort StoriesSatirical StyleNew York SceneFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Descent of Man and Other Stories by Edith WhartonAuthor: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 1, 2003

Editor's review

A short story collection by Edith Wharton, including "The Descent of Man" and other pieces, continuing her familiar territory of New York high society and dissecting marriage, class and moral hypocrisy with a cool, sharp pen. Her stories often advance through understated irony rather than dramatic conflict, revealing characters' self-deception and predicaments in dialogue and detail, and they linger in the mind. For Chinese readers, this book can serve as an entry point to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American social customs and the craft of the short story, and is also suitable for reading alongside her major novels to observe how the same material is handled at different lengths. This edition is a Project Gutenberg eBook, with the text in English, and is best used as English original reading material; notes or an introduction are recommended to absorb the period background and social vocabulary.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one or two stories first to grasp the style, then read through the collection in order and avoid taking on too much at once.
  2. Pay attention to what lies beneath the characters' dialogue as you read, and jot down ironic moments as you go.
  3. When social titles or period background are unclear, look up the words first and then reread the passage; do not stop over every word.
  4. After finishing, choose one story to compare with a Wharton novel and compare how short and long fiction differ in method.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40

FAQ

Is this book a Chinese translation or the English original? This edition is an eBook released by Project Gutenberg, with the text in the original English and no Chinese translation. It suits readers with some foundation in English reading; if you only want to read Chinese, you will need to find another translation.
I have not read any other works by Wharton. Can I read this directly? Yes. This is a short story collection, and the stories are relatively independent and do not depend on prior reading. Her writing often involves high-society etiquette and views on marriage, however, so learning a little about the period background first will make the reading smoother.
What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition? Project Gutenberg eBooks prioritize convenience and free access, and their layout and notes are relatively simple, usually without a detailed introduction or footnotes. It is advisable to have a dictionary or annotation tool at hand and to check period vocabulary and social expressions when you encounter them, which will make the reading experience more complete.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937 Author

Edith Wharton (Wharton, Edith, 1862–1937) was an American novelist, with 44 works held in this collection. She depicts with fine brushwork the manners and moral dilemmas of New York high society from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Her representative novels The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth both focus on women's struggles among marriage, class, and selfhood; Ethan Frome, set in rural New England, presents tragic fates in a repressive environment. Her style is calm and restrained, revealing through everyday details the conflict between individual psychology and social convention, and her works combine irony with sympathy. Beyond novels, she also wrote nonfiction such as The Decoration of Houses and ghost-story collections such as Tales of Men and Ghosts, showing diverse subjects. Public information is limited, and biographical details fall outside this introduction; yet judging from the works held here alone, her sustained attention to social class and gender roles makes her a voice not to be overlooked in American literature.